OVERVIEW
Game: C.A.T.S (Crash Arena Turbo Stars)
Genre: Casual PvP Fighting Game
Developer: ZeptoLab
Rating: 3/5
BATTLE RESULTS
C.A.T.S. has a fun and unique game mechanic, but is bogged down by user experience issues and over complication of certain meta features. The pacing of the gameplay and progression also seems off because of balancing and timing concerns that make it difficult for the player to become invested long term. Despite that I still believe that it’s a really creative game that just needs to iron out some crucial issues to become a real fighter in the free to play battle arena.
Full review follows below
ONBOARDING
The Good
The cutscene is great. It has some nice story elements, but keeps is quick and gives you a nice feel for the wackiness of the game. It also shows you a sample of the main gameplay and instantly gets you involved the competition element of the game
First machine customization is quick
After your first fight you win a box, and you can instantly start experimenting with different parts
The Bad
Not much. This is a good and quick onboarding. It’s the later tutorials in the game that could use improvement, but more on that in the next section.
FIRST SESSION
The Good
Fast progression. The game starts you off with lots of freebies so you can immediately experiment with different types of cars. Battles are quick and you should be able to win a lot and even move up a tier in the league all within the first session.
Video Ads! I’m usually against having video ads in the first session, but in this case ads are actually good? Ads can be used to speed up the box unlocking and in this case, it actually helps extend your 1st session. If there were no ads, your session would end after collecting 4 boxes. Here, ads help you unlock the boxes faster to gain more parts quickly so you can continue playing, experimenting, and upgrading your car.
The Bad
There are a lot of meta features and it’s a bit overwhelming to have to go through all of them in the first session. I think it’s better to keep things simple in session 1, get the player hooked on the main gameplay modes, then start introducing things later on. In particular the betting feature and the bonus skill points mastery could be moved to a later session or as the player naturally encounters the features.
GAMEPLAY
GAME MODES
Quick Play
Play a quick 1v1 and earn boxes after 3 wins
Earn and lose prestige depending on the results
Championship
Fight against all members in your group
Earn medals and move up in the league based on your results
META PLAY
Championship Map
Win fights against your other group members to progress
Progress through the championship map to unlock new parts
Be promoted to the next map stage when the season is over
Defend in championship league
Passive play. While you are offline, other players fight against your constructed car. For every player you beat, you earn coins
Leagues
Earn prestige to move up in leagues
Get a prize when the league season is over
Betting
Bet on 1v1 matches to upgrade and improve your parts
Mastery
Use skill points to improve certain bonuses such as added attack power or a better coin value
Upgrading
Fuse and level up parts to make them stronger
BASIC GAMEFLOW
C.A.T.S is a battle arena game. The player needs to construct cars that will fight against other players’ cars. Winning battles and leagues gives the player more car parts, coins, gems, and other rewards that can help players improve their cars and progress through the competitive leagues and arenas.
The Good
Encourages creativity
Building your own car is a real creative process, which isn’t something you can say for a lot games nowadays. Players are encouraged to experiment and learn from their mistakes to constantly improve their cars. The player has the freedom to mix and match parts and even if that means the car will fail to even move or start, the game let’s the player succeed or fail on their own.
Unpredictability
The cars follow the laws of physics and since each car creation is different, anything can happen. Other players will come up with combinations that you never would’ve thought off. It creates a fun and unpredictable atmosphere.
Hands off gameplay
I actually, see this as a pro and a con, but first, why I think it’s a pro and more on the con side later. Lots of games are moving towards a hands off gameplay where you just do some upgrading or planning then you let your characters work for you. This is a nice twist on that where you essentially prepare your car for battle then let physics decide who wins. It adds an element of excitement for you, as the creator, to see how your creation will fare in battle.
The Bad
User experience
Editing your car
Saving car setups. Sometimes when I get new parts I want to experiment with them, but I can’t do so without saving my current car setup. It becomes a hassle for me to try the new parts and then switch back to my old setup if I find that the new setup didn’t work out. Having even just 1 backup slot where you can save a setup while you try an alternate would help a lot, and would encourage players to easily switch between 1 or 2 cars. Sometimes I accidentally drag a body into the main editing area and my entire setup is lost.
Filtering sub categories. Within each of the 4 main categories there are various sub categories and it can be hard to scroll through all of your parts to find what you are looking for. Having a toggle to filter sub categories would make this process simpler.
Arranging by attack regardless of sub category. The parts are arranged by subcategory by attack. Giving the player more options to easily parse through all the parts they have would give them a better handle on creating the best and strongest car.
Leveling up / fusing
I think the leveling up and fusing is overcomplicated. Since you can fuse basically any part to any other part it’s overwhelming to the player to decide which parts to level up. For example, you can fuse wheels to bodies or weapons to wheels.
Limiting fusing to parts of the same sub-type (roller wheels to roller wheels, titan bodies to titan bodies) would create a more focused parts progression and would encourage players to keep parts of all types.
Balancing
Leveling up is costly. It’s pretty expensive to level up your parts to a competitive stage. It’s hard to decide to experiment on another part type when you’ve already invested a lot on the parts you are using now. At the early stage, I think it should start out much cheaper so the player has more freedom to experiment and invest in multiple types of card. It can get more expensive later on when the player is more aware of the advantages and disadvantages of each part.
Another issue connected to that is. Once you move up in the championship, you unlock higher tiered parts and your old parts essentially become useless since they can’t really be used competitively anymore. You can sell all your old parts, but the money you feel a little cheated with all the money you spent improving on your current car only to have it become unusable in the next stage.
Unproportionate Waiting Times
Waiting time for for opening boxes are too long for the playtime or value you get out of it. It takes 3 quick fights to earn 1 box. Fights take between 5-20 seconds, which means that after waiting 2 hours to open a box, you can easily earn another one as fast as 30 seconds or 3-4 minutes if you lose a few battles.
Rewards wise, you get 6-10 parts per box. Obviously not all the parts are useful or the parts you wanted for your car setup. So there is a chance that after waiting 2 hours to open a box, the player will only get 1 or 2 parts that he/she will want to use to improve or experiment with.
Hands off battle
Like I mentioned above, this is both a pro and con. I already discussed why I think it’s a good thing, now here’s why I think it isn’t. This is somewhat related to my point above. If I have to wait 2-6 hours to open a box and then spend a minute or 2 fixing their setup, having a hands off battle style makes it feel like I’m not really doing much in the game. Within a minute I can already earn a new box and it’s harder for me to get engaged. Like I said, I do think the hands-off gameplay works well for the game and the con side of it is more to do with the surrounding external factors that hinder engagement.
Sponsor boxes
It’s unclear to me how to earn sponsor boxes and there is no countdown timer to indicate when the next box is coming. Seems like a missed opportunity to implement this properly as a visible regularly recurring bonus to re-engage players.
RE-ENGAGEMENT
The game has various re-engagement methods
Box unlocking: At the end of each session the player presumably has a box unlock in progress. When the box is done unlocking, the player should receive a notification that could bring them back into the game.
Sponsor Boxes: If the player has no box currently unlocking, then the sponsor boxes which appear every so often should re-engage the player. When a box is ready, a notification is sent.
League Cycles: When a league is almost over, the player receives a notification. This should help re-engagement players especially if they have already invested time into ranking up and would like to finish the league at a good spot for better rewards.
Championship Cycles: Similar to the league notification, players get a notification when championship cycles are about to end. It’s effective for the same reason.
What’s missing are daily re-engagement notifications simply reminding me to play if I’ve been inactive for a while. After 2 and 3 days of inactivity, I didn’t receive any re-engagement notifications.
MONETIZATION
The game has 2 currencies: coins and gems.
Coins
Gained:
Machine defend from championship game mode
Championship round results (more wins = more coins)
From boxes
Selling unwanted parts
Used for:
Upgrading / Leveling Up / Fusing Parts
Skipping battles
Gems
Gained:
From boxes
League results
Championship results
Purchased using real money
Used for:
Speed up box opening
Recover parts lost in betting gameplay
Buy boxes
Special Offer
First time buyer offer appeared on session 1, day 2 (great timing) and had a really good value. I think it’s the perfect time and value to be able to convert new players.
The game has a good currency flow with the player constantly earning in-game currency from multiple sources. There is not just 1 main squeeze point for monetization so it’s a good balance of letting the player choose where they wish to invest their money. Players can spend gems to buy boxes if they wish to quickly gain more parts or spend gems to quickly unlock boxes. Players who prioritize upgrading the parts they already have can focus on spending gems to buy coins. I like it when a game gives you options to spend and doesn’t obviously squeeze everything out of you in just 1 aspect of the game.
I also like that it’s still pretty well balanced between non-spending and spending users. Users who spend can progress much faster, but will still ultimately be paired against equal leveled players because of the tiered leagues. And even though you can easily buy boxes and gain more parts, how you put those parts together is ultimately depends on your skill and creativity so it gives you an advantage, but doesn’t guarantee a win.
Overall, I think the monetization techniques are well integrated into the game, and any hindrance comes from other balancing issues mentioned in sections above.
BATTLE RESULTS
C.A.T.S. has a fun and unique game mechanic, but is bogged down by user experience issues and over complication of certain meta features. The pacing of the gameplay and progression also seems off because of balancing and timing concerns that make it difficult for the player to become invested long term. Despite that I still believe that it’s a really creative game that just needs to iron out some crucial issues to become a real fighter in the free to play battle arena.
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